***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[IATT]

 

[Brownstone]

Don’t remind me. That would’ve been a disaster

How so?

 

[Brownstone]

LOL. Da reach is overwhelming.

Two things can be true. 1. Lets not pretend that if Putin was black or asian or middle eastern he wouldn't be hated by Fox news. 2. Russia is severely overrated by media outlets of their reach and power. Russia is not China, not even close, in terms of power, in terms of political influence, in terms of technology, in terms of anything really.

 

[IATT]

 

[dmbrhs]

He has no chance, but would love to see him win just for the throwback to the 1800s on how he'd get to Washington. Would he travel by train? By stagecoach? Hell, he might even upgrade to the 20th century and take a bus.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Believe me when I say that I understand your position.

The reality is though, 1 out of 2 voters just don't care until **** hits the fan, and it's impossible for the half that does care to carry out the civic duties of the half that doesn't.

This issue is essentially what people with means from developing countries face when discussing the possibility of moving away, and they decide to emigrate because they realize that too few around them give enough of a **** to want things to be better for their neighbor and not just themselves.

I don't think people who are being critical of Democrats are giving up; I know I'm not. However, it isn't realistic to think that those who support Democrats can get somewhere in this fight when the leadership of the Democratic party doesn't even acknowledge the type of fight it's in. How can we expect to have a chance to turn things around when our Democratic leaders refuse to acknowledge the true nature of the GOP? They're palling around with people who tried to get them killed a mere year ago! Everyday, they're going to work with these people and calling them "friends" when they know these guys have been hellbent on tearing down democracy in this country.

On top of that, the leadership shows more willingness to throw the members of their own party under the bus, to the benefit of the RW messaging machine. We see how they are blaming progressives for the centrist BS (even though we all saw progressives compromise time and time again to give Biden and the rest of Dems something to campaign on in 2022); the party's own members openly criticize the president's agenda without so much as a reprimand from the leadership, to the delight of the right wing donors; and we see some, like the NYC mayor, returning to third-way democratic policies, even though we know they failed then and they don't have a chance to succeed today.

How do you expect to win a war when your own generals are advertising the weak points of your army? That's the real frustration here. The Dem leadership is wasting our time, and folks are right to ask which side are they really on.

My objection to takes like these is basically the same fundamental beef I have with takes Osh makes, it takes a reasonable criticism and stretches it too far.

At this point, the Dems need to try to minimize the damage in November (but things are looking worse and worse on that front every day). I thought they could do that if BBB passed, but Manchin ****** them over severely. So I heap all my anger on Manchin for that, not the people that tried to get it passed. The other things killing them in polling are mostly out of their control. Inflation, Covid, gas prices.

I generally feel a large chunk of the Democratic Party are chumps. In that, they let the GOP dictate the framing way too much. However, I know fixing that is not a cure-all. I honestly don't know how the Dems reverse some of the trends squeezing them while in power. The kind of messaging that might fix it might be impossible anyway. I don't know how you get a diverse coalition with hostilities among them, to reach a level of message discipline to overcome misinformation, disinformation, horse race coverage, and right-wing propaganda. In an election year when thermostatic political pressure already kinda locks you in to take an "L"

-The Democratic leadership to me seems to fundamentally understand the fight in front of them, the issue is they don't have enough votes to actually make changes to fix their structural disadvantages. Saying nice things about Mitch McConnell, and being friendly from time to time with Republicans somehow holds more weight than the bill they passed in the House and 96% of the Democratic Senators voting for. To me, that is not a compelling argument.

You make AOC the House Speaker, Warren the Majority Leader, and Bernie the president, and nothing fundamentally changes here. I agree they should attack Mitch McConnell and the GOP more, but that doesn't move the needle on the important stuff.

There are no turning things around through mainly messaging (I actually think their main problem is the incoherence of it). That is not the only thing that costs the Dems. The electoral system is rigged against them and two conservative Dems won't let them change it, the electoral geography hurts them, education polarization is hurting them, and the GOP got lucky a lot along the way. You can't message or play tough out of these things. And if we are talking about messaging and political tactics, sorry to say, but leftist progressives have zero answers on how to turn around the fortunes of the party, because, they have no coherent plan to win in swing districts. Centrists hold so much power in the party because of this, it is the elephant in the room some people seem to want to ignore and put all the blame on "leadership" or "Biden" for siding with centrists like that is what gives them power. I hate those clowns so much, corporate capture is a massive problem with them, but it is clear to me where their power comes from.

So discussions of intraparty beef are presented as a discussion as the panacea for the interparty conflict. (Another reason I hate this is that it is the same thing centrists fall back on when they fail)

We have a party that wins around 54% of the two-way vote consistently. That compared to other left-wing parties that is pretty good. The problem is that at best gets them 50% of the power, and they need to figure out how to win 58% of the vote consistently while the country becomes more and more partisan, and they are losing ground with voting groups with structurally more power. This is extremely hard. I have issues with tactics here and there, but again, I don't know what the easy answer is for political problems that have befuddled politicians for decades. A subset of Democratic voters always feeling justified to take their foot off the gas is a major issue too.

The same person I am arguing with could not bring himself to vote for Hillary Clinton with the alternative being a deranged bigot. Tons of people thought like him. And he is now complaining about how the Dems are pissing him off because they are not talking tough enough for his liking, because somehow talking tough is the panacea to the Dems reversing the damage that could have been avoided if all the people that didn't want a Trump presidency just listened to Hillary Clinton. And because of this, he wants to take his ball and go home because he is upset. All while complaining again because I call out this behavior. He has every right to do this, but it still comes off entitled as ****. It still conveniently misunderstand political forces to sanitize his entitlement.

-Plus what leadership? Schumer takes the side of the progressive all the time. Sinema hates him, Manchin complains about him now. Centrists in the House hate Pelosi more than the progressive caucus does. The complaints you have about leadership taking the wrong side, centrist have the same complaints. Hell swing district centrists have been complaining about other centrists too. Biden has hardly antagonized the progressive wing of the party at all. It just seems somehow party leadership now extends to centrists that antagonize a progressive with a bad take, outside PACs that have petty beef with progressives, and any and everybody that sympathizes with them. The Democratic coalition is much more diverse than the GOP. There are more incentives that make members dissent from what leadership does. The level of discipline you think leadership can have on the party, especially in bad times, is unheard of for the modern Democratic party.

Biden going to war with part of his party won't do anything to improve the Dems situation.

The leadership does get heated in party calls about criticizing Biden, but it is hard to reprimand because a) they feed info anonymously b) going to war with your party also feeds the right a talking point. Dems in disarray is something the mainstream media loves to run with. Secondly, progressives criticize Biden's agenda too.

If people have to question what side the Democratic Party is on, they are not paying attention. They are a massively flawed and frustrating institution. Those people piss me off on the daily.

It just seems to me like many of the arguments I see are an easy way to cope with bad circumstances instead of grappling with what actually cost the left coalition the most on election day. It is pretending that things are more easily fixable than they are. It is Osh's rants about progressives last year but coming from a different direction on the ideological spectrum. So I have an issue with it.

Again, I agree with many of your points, but I think they are stretched a bit beyond reasonable

 

[RustyShackleford]

Let someone else start with some vague "Dems just need to talk tough" steez...

 

[osh kosh bosh]

My objection to takes like these is basically the same fundamental beef I have with takes Osh makes, it takes a reasonable criticism and stretches it too far.

At this point, the Dems need to try to minimize the damage in November (but things are looking worse and worse on that front every day). I thought they could do that if BBB passed, but Manchin ****ed them over severely. So I heap all my anger on Manchin for that, not the people that tried to get it passed. The other things killing them in polling are mostly out of their control. Inflation, Covid, gas prices.

I generally feel a large chunk of the Democratic Party are chumps. In that, they let the GOP dictate the framing way too much. However, I know fixing that is not a cure-all. I honestly don't know how the Dems reverse some of the trends squeezing them while in power. The kind of messaging that might fix it might be impossible anyway. I don't know how you get a diverse coalition with hostilities among them, to reach a level of message discipline to overcome misinformation, disinformation, horse race coverage, and right-wing propaganda. In an election year when thermostatic political pressure already kinda locks you in to take an "L"

-The Democratic leadership to me seems to fundamentally understand the fight in front of them, the issue is they don't have enough votes to actually make changes to fix their structural disadvantages. Saying nice things about Mitch McConnell, and being friendly from time to time with Republicans somehow holds more weight than the bill they passed in the House and 96% of the Democratic Senators voting for. To me, that is not a compelling argument.

You make AOC the House Speaker, Warren the Majority Leader, and Bernie the president, and nothing fundamentally changes here. I agree they should attack Mitch McConnell and the GOP more, but that doesn't move the needle on the important stuff.

There are no turning things around through mainly messaging (I actually think their main problem is the incoherence of it). That is not the only thing that costs the Dems. The electoral system is rigged against them and two conservative Dems won't let them change it, the electoral geography hurts them, education polarization is hurting them, and the GOP got lucky a lot along the way. You can't message or play tough out of these things. And if we are talking about messaging and political tactics, sorry to say, but leftist progressives have zero answers on how to turn around the fortunes of the party, because, they have no coherent plan to win in swing districts. Centrists hold so much power in the party because of this, it is the elephant in the room some people seem to want to ignore and put all the blame on "leadership" or "Biden" for siding with centrists like that is what gives them power. I hate those clowns so much, corporate capture is a massive problem with them, but it is clear to me where their power comes from.

So discussions of intraparty beef are presented as a discussion as the panacea for the interparty conflict.

Another reason I hate this is that it is the same thing centrists fall back on when they fail.

We have a party that wins around 54% of the two-way vote consistently. That compared to other left-wing parties that is pretty good. The problem is that at best gets them 50% of the power, and they need to figure out how to win 58% of the vote consistently while the country becomes more and more partisan, and they are losing ground with voting groups with structurally more power. This is extremely hard. I have issues with tactics here and there, but again, I don't know what the easy answer is for political problems that have befuddled politicians for decades. A subset of Democratic voters always feeling justified to take their foot off the gas is a major issue too.

The same person I am arguing with could not bring himself to vote for Hillary Clinton with the alternative being a deranged bigot. Tons of people thought like him. And he is now complaining about how the Dems are pissing him off because they are not talking tough enough for his liking, because somehow talking tough is the panacea to the Dems reversing the damage that could have been avoided if all the people that didn't want a Trump presidency just listened to Hillary Clinton. And because of this, he wants to take his ball and go home because he is upset. All while complaining again because I call out this behavior. He has every right to do this, but it still comes off entitled as ****. It still conveniently misunderstand political forces to sanitize his entitlement.

-Plus what leadership? Schumer takes the side of the progressive all the time. Sinema hates him, Manchin complains about him now. Centrists in the House hate Pelosi more than the progressive caucus does. The complaints you have about leadership taking the wrong side, centrist have the same complaints. Hell swing district centrists have been complaining about other centrists too. Biden has hardly antagonized the progressive wing of the party at all. It just seems somehow party leadership now extends to centrists that antagonize a progressive with a bad take, outside PACs that have petty beef with progressives, and any and everybody that sympathizes with them. The Democratic coalition is much more diverse than the GOP. There are more incentives that make members dissent from what leadership does. The level of discipline you think leadership can have on the party, especially in bad times, is unheard of for the modern Democratic party.

Biden going to war with part of his party won't do anything to improve the Dems situation.

The leadership does get heated in party calls about criticizing Biden, but it is hard to reprimand because a) they feed info anonymously b) going to war with your party also feeds the right a talking point. Dems in disarray is something the mainstream media loves to run with. Secondly, progressives criticize Biden's agenda too.

If people have to question what side the Democratic Party is on, they are not paying attention. They are a massively flawed and frustrating institution.

It just seems to me like many of the arguments I see are an easy way to cope with bad circumstances instead of grappling with what actually cost the left coalition the most on election day. It is pretending that things are more easily fixable than they are. It is Osh's rants about progressives last year but coming from a different direction on the ideological spectrum

To be clear; I don't think anything is easily fixable.



I think it's very hard.


It might very well be that the message discipline required to improve the situation for the democrats

Is simply impossible to pull off in 2022 media environment.

I may have have a different perscription of what should be done

And a different diagnosis of where the problems lie,



but I don't think it's easy.

 

[mplsdunk]

I never said I wasn’t voting for the record.

It’s not that I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hilary, I just didn’t give af about politics then or think any of it mattered.

 

[dmbrhs]

Full disclosure: I haven't watched a clip of Hannity in 15+ years. He is orange, just like his demi-god. Also, Hannity used to actually be tolerable on his radio show back in the early to mid 2000s. I remember when he had Howard Stern on (this was even before Howard was going to Sirius). It was fantastic. Not so much an interview, but an interaction. That will never be replicated. They hated each other, but they could do an hour together.

 

[freeze]

She's such an idiot it makes me uncomfortable.

 

[freeze]

Is he undeveloped?

 

[AEA18]

Why does she look like she's mummifying?

Probably a result of too many buttery biscuits and Collodial Silver consumption

 

[IATT]

 

[Chopper]

Just read on article on CNN about what the various sanctions would mean for Russia. If the EU, UK, US and some other allies max sanctions, it is estimated to have about a 5-6% impact on Russia's GDP. Can't imagine that's enough to get Putin to back down.

 

[$tatus $ymbol]

Idk why I turned on cspan this morning but I did and man this country is screwed Republicans calling in blaming worker wage gains and stimulus checks for inflation. These folks are gonna keep voting in droves against their own interests then blaming dO NoThiNG dEmOcratS. I hate to be all gloom and doom but the future is not looking bright at all.

 

[IATT]

 

[dinyc3st]

Rudy snitching?

 

[Rootin4EverybodyBlack]

I never said I wasn’t voting for the record.

It’s not that I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hilary, I just didn’t give af about politics then or think any of it mattered.

I can understand that. I think a lot of ppl pre-2016 felt like the system “is what it is” and might not have fully recognized how ridiculous the Republican Party had gotten.

I’ve voted in every election since 2008, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t think either party would openly enable an idiot the way they did Trump. Like people are still acting like Jan. 6th wasn’t as bad as it was.

 

[aepps20]

Haven't been this proud of a group of individuals than I am of each and every one of you.

 

[freeze]

Why don't I feel bad

 

[AEA18]

Why don't I feel bad

 

[biggie62]

I thought trump doesn’t work with snitches

 

[IATT]

I thought trump doesn’t work with snitches

considering trump is notorious for not paying bills

things gotta be rough for rudy

 

[RustyShackleford]

Rudy snitching?

I know Ninja is hurt by this. His two favorite bigots might soon be at odds

Papi-on-papi snitching is not a good look